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Comment by Meekro | Hacker News Reader

> Replace "lab leak theory" with whatever topic you think has been unfairly censored, and the reason it was censored (or any other action taken against it) is not because of the content of that topic, I ABSOLUTELY ASSURE YOU.

Pretty sure this is not true. The Hunter Biden laptop story was censored for one reason, and one reason only: it was a bombshell dropped at the 11th hour, and liberals were afraid that it would result in Trump winning re-election. The truth or untruth of the story was beside the point; if it had been Trump Jr's laptop, it would never have been censored.

Censorship is not inevitable. If Musk had been in charge of Twitter back then, this story would not have been censored.

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That must explain why numerous right wing media outlets also chose not to cover it (Fox, WSJ, others).

It was not covered at the time because the way it was "released" meant that the claims were unsubstantiated and unsubstaniable. As more information comes out the appears to be actually verifiable (and verified), it is showing up in "completely mainstream media" outlets.

There's a problem when you try to release a news story using more or less precisely the same playbook that would be used if the story was fabricated. You can't blame the media for not taking you seriously when you (in this case Guiliani) does more or less precisely what someone who was lying through their teeth and knew it. If you want them to take you seriously, you need to give them the chance to verify your claims. The Hunter Biden Laptop story was bungled as much by its "releasors" as by the media.

Also, even today, it's not entirely clear what the big deal actually is, other than being able to say "possible corruption" and "Joe Biden" in the same sentence.

> It was not covered at the time because the way it was "released" meant that the claims were unsubstantiated and unsubstaniable.

No, I don’t think so. There are billions of unsubstantiated and unsustainable messages on Twitter. I think this one was censored because of the political impact. It seems weird to argue otherwise.

There are 3 primary alternatives:

1. ban any and all messages that contain unsubstantiated and unverifiable contents

2. ban such messages that may have an outsize impact on society if they are false

3. allow all messages and just deal with the consequences post-facto

The first one is operationally impossible. The last one might seem OK if you're a free speech absolutist, but the cost/benefit analysis doesn't come out well in most people's opinions (that is, the downsides of allowing every invented story designed to distort an election are larger than the benefits of completely uncontrolled use of a private messaging platform). Which leaves #2, ie. precisely what Twitter did.

It’s hard for Twitter to know what is false so #2 is pretty hard. In this case it ended up being true but was many months afterwards until it was verified.

They don't have to know if it is false. They have to know

1. it is unverified 2. if true, would have substantial impact

> That must explain why numerous right wing media outlets also chose not to cover it (Fox, WSJ, others). No, it's because every other outlet has a standard, which is that they need to be able to independently confirm a story and not shout every random rumor they hear.

The whole laptop story has hearsay from one random technician. There was very little evidence to backup any of it. The files may have been real, but they very well could have stolen by a foreign entity (Russia), and given to this random technician as a way to make it look not stolen. By spreading it, they would have been helping Russia influence our elections, again.

Glenn Greenwald believed in the story, and was later proven right. I don't blame other media outlets for waiting for additional confirmation, but I do blame Twitter for inventing a totally new policy for censoring this one story. In a case like this, where some journalists believe in a story and others don't, but neither side has won the debate (yet), the story should be published and discussed. That's the policy they take with literally every other news story, including many dubious ones that are later discredited.

I guess I can't prove this part, but I'm pretty sure Twitter would have taken the opposite stance if, say, CNN had found Trump Jr's laptop.

Regarding your claim that the story is not a big deal, you as a voter are entitled to decide that for yourself. However, a majority of likely voters disagree with you. A Rasmussen poll found that 48% of likely voters consider the story "very important" and another 18% consider it "important."[1] Rasmussen is considered a grade-B pollster by FiveThirtyEight, so their data can be trusted.

[1] https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/gen...

> Glenn Greenwald believed in the story, and was later proven right

mind sharing this proof?

> I don't blame other media outlets for waiting for additional confirmation, but I do blame Twitter for inventing a totally new policy for censoring this one story.

Given the impact of the "but her emails" on Clinton's presidential run (a story that was actually real, but absurdly (especially in retrospect) framed and overstated), I don't blame Twitter for not wanting to play a role in spreading yet another potentially BS "story" around the time of an election in arguably the world's most powerful nation.

> I guess I can't prove this part, but I'm pretty sure Twitter would have taken the opposite stance if, say, CNN had found Trump Jr's laptop.

No, you can't prove that part, and I'm pretty sure they would not have taken the opposite stance.

> In a case like this, where some journalists believe in a story and others don't, but neither side has won the debate (yet), the story should be published and discussed.

No, these are not viable standards. First of all, Greenwald was 100% free to publish and discuss the story. Just not on Twitter. Secondly, the criteria is not "do some journalists believe in a story", but "is there actually evidence that the story is true". Greenwald had no more evidence than anyone else, it just "felt right" to him, and so he believed it. Nobody stopped him from talking about it (nobody seems to be able to stop Greenwald from talking about anything, really). A private corporation decided that it did not want to play a role in this story without more evidence that it may be true. The threshold is not "is there a journalist who believes it (because there more or less always is).

It wasn't so much censored as it was boring and irrelevant. If it was driving clicks it wouldn't have been "censored".

> If it was driving clicks it wouldn't have been "censored".

You have it backwards, it was driving clicks and the algo was full steam ahead getting more clicks. It had to be manually removed to stop the spread.

I could "release" a story on how I found an iPad on a bus that shows that Donald Trump Jr. has sex with babies and then posts it on a hidden social media network. I could release it (like Guiliani did with the Hunter Biden story) with no verifiable evidence, just an insistence that this is all true.

The story would be false, because I just made that up. I would think it would be pretty remiss of FB or Twitter to allow my invented story to spread given its completely unsubstantiated nature.

Now, if at a later date, it turned out that people were able to verify that DTjr did in fact have sex with babies and shared the videos with a private network, it would also be remiss of FB and Twitter to prevent discussion of it.

We live in an era where people can release stories with generated audio, video and other visual media to make any invented point they want. The idea that these stories should be able to be spread around freely even in the absence of any actually verified facts is fundamentally absurd. If you were to get that wish, I am absolutely certain that you would hate the world it would create even more than you might the current one.

It sounds like you just admitted that it wasn't boring and irrelevant.

Nope.

Why would a big story like that involving the presidential candidate and his son be boring and irrelevant?

No, it was censored. Twitter prevented anyone from tweeting links to the story, and prevented people from sharing the story via private message.[1] They also banned the @nypost twitter account for posting it and refusing to take it down.[2] Also, in a poll by a reputable pollster, a majority of likely voters called the story "important" or "very important"[3] -- pretty much the opposite of "boring and irrelevant."

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54552101 [2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/oct/30/twitter-n... [3] https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/gen...

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